Question:

What ethical challenges arise when social media and political reporting collide?

Election 2012 is fraught with distortions and distractions. Media coverage serves an electorate ever more in need of accurate, relevant information, and increasingly accustomed to getting news and voicing their desires and demands instantly and online. How does this affect political coverage – researching, reporting, tweeting, contextualizing, responding? How have you handled the challenges?

Ellyn, we’re going to switch this conversation from “live” to “slow-drip” now. People can read through anytime and we’ll all get notified when new comments post. A good time for thinking through ideas, reflecting, pushing back, adding new. Thank you so very much for participating! (And staying longer than planned!)

The next live conversation in this series is Thursday, 9/27, about quote approval and managing other ethical issues that come up in reporting that depends on access to people in power. The slow-drip continues!

Im a student at Kent State University. I was asked by the magazine on campus to live tweet during the Obama event. I would like to know what is appropriate to tweet. I want to be objective about my tweeting but still show people that it is me tweeting. How do I do this so people know I am tweeting and reporting on Obama’s speech from a totally objective angle? Can I be objective if I am “covering” this event via social media?

I would recommend first talking to your editor and asking for their perspective. If you are tweeting from the magazine’s account, you can alert the Twitter followers that you will be live tweeting and include your handle, and/or sign the tweets with your initials so they know where the messages are coming from. Another way to tweet would be to tweet “professionally” from the magazine account, and tweeting anything that is more “personal” from your account. And as long as you are reporting what is happening and not interjecting your opinions or ideas you should be on the right track.

I like the thought of transparency, but journalists may feel safer to err on the side of keeping your mouth shut to avoid consequences, which is unfortunate, especially since journalists can be very useful advocates on issues that ought to be considered “public interest” by a broad portion of the population (i.e. investigative reporting on public health risks).

Any thoughts on fostering an audience culture of “well I may not agree with that reporter’s personal beliefs, but I trust that they are contributing to a better collective foundation of facts, of which to draw those beliefs upon.” (Obviously journalists need to somehow prove that they have integrity in order to achieve this)

I’d add to that – do reporters have an ETHICAL obligation to advocate on issues that affect journalism and make it harder to do good work? Or the perception of the media? Or even on the behavior of politicians, or follow-the-money laws, since we’re focusing this on the realm of political reporting.

Whenever you interject your opinion you run the risk of being overly prescriptive and alienating your audience, but you have to balance this with the importance of free speech and a civil public discourse. Hope this helps!

We’ve been talking about this issue a lot in my ethics class (and now we’re moving the discussion online — prepare for lots of replies from Okies). I think completely limiting reporters by saying, “You may not express ANY opinion EVER” really misses the boat on the power of Twitter. Reporters can really engage with their readers, and expressing opinions is an important way to do that. Sure, you can go too far — I think it’s probably too much for journalists to advocate for a specific politician or a controversial social issue. But was Octavia Nasr’s fairly-neutral use of the word “respect” inappropriate? I don’t think so.

I think limiting opinions on public interest issues, like you noted, makes media orgs lose out on a new dialogue that’s pretty important. I also think AP’s policy of seeing retweets as endorsement keeps those reporters from getting out all sides of a story succinctly. Not exactly a case study, but looking at their policy is pretty interesting.

I know that didn’t really answer your final question, but honestly, I’m waiting on an answer, too!

Ocatvia Nasr and the AP’s retweet policy are great examples to look into, thanks!

I saw someone put this in their Twitter bio: “RT != endorsement” … translated as “Retweet does not equal endorsement”

I think the best thing from a common language perspective would be to add +1 before a RT if you endorse. Simple as that, but getting everyone to adopt and understand language norms like that is not terribly easy 🙂

futhermore, retweeting by clicking the “retweet” button on Twitter itself saves you character space in your tweet because you don’t have to type in “RT @username” — but doesn’t give you the option to preface your retweet with something like a +1. {{sigh}}

Hi Jacob, actually, I think you’re really onto something with the +1 idea..some twitter platforms (Tweetdeck is one of them) give you the option to retweet with or without added comments. This is where you could implement your +1 symbol 🙂
Otherwise, you can always copy the tweet you’re intending to RT then paste it into a new post, again, adding your +1. I know, perhaps a long way around it, but I do think that it’s important to distinguish a support/distancing procedure for journalists to be able to retweet messages they deem important components in productive dialogue.

Hello everyone! I’m so glad to welcome Ellyn Angelotti from The Poynter Institute to the JA today, to talk about the ethical challenges that come up when social media and political reporting collide. We met last week at the Poynter Kent State Media Ethics workshop and the presentation she and Kelly McBride of Poynter did summarizing what happened in journalism, social and digital space over the past decade or so was one of my favorite sessions.

This online conversation – and three more to come over the next couple of weeks are part of a larger partnership to crowdsource a new ethics best practices guide to political coverage.

You can jump into this hour, or anytime after. Participants – including Ellyn – will get an email whenever anyone posts, so you’re gauranteed the conversation will continue with plenty of time to reflect, respond and challenge.

If you are a Twitter fan, we have set up #JAConvPoliEth to talk there.

Eager to hear Ellyn and Emily talk about social media and political reporting this afternoon. Just after the Poynter KSU Media Ethics Workshop ended last week, we found out President Obama would be speaking on campus tomorrow. There will lots of coverage, much of it on social media, to use, consume and dissect.

The semester is “new” so we haven’t delved into social media coverage with the early skills classes yet. Student media are all over the coverage and they’re more experienced. We will see lots of Tweets, stories, sidebars, posts to KentWired.com and live coverage on the campus station. The thing we have to remember is students are learning so this is a huge event to learn from. What would you recommend?

Well, I’ve been wondering about developing a set of questions – three for example – that you should answer before you tweet something you’re covering. I’d love to hear what your students – and you – might come up with for a short list. Anything come to mind? Like maybe: “is this true?” Or is that too simple a review? 🙂

That’s a great idea; I’ll ask students today what they would recommend and post it here later. Here are 3 questions I’d ask:
Is it new/newsworthy? Do the claims/statements need corroboration? And this from a Poynter ethics guide: What is my journalistic purpose (in Tweeting this)?

[Post 1 of 2]
With Emily’s encouragement, I asked my ethics students for three questions they think journalists should consider before tweeting. I got 23 responses, so I’m going to group their answers and give some examples of wording. Their answers centered on three areas. (See next post for the third.)

1. Reliability of information sources/verification
-Are my sources reliable since I can’t take it back?
-Do I have enough information from credible sources to know that this news is accurate?
-What exactly are you doing to back up information you tweet out? Are you linking to an article? A document? How are you going to quickly verify for the audience what you are reporting?

2. Accuracy in brief/lack of distortion
-Is what you say in the tweet truly giving the idea of the story instead of sensationalizing the story for the sake of brevity?
-Do my 140 characters accurately represent this story?
-Is the news something that can be clearly stated in 140 characters or less and not cause any confusion?
-Have my 140 accurately relayed the proper and pertinent info without confusing or misleading a reader?

[Post 2 of 2]
3. Public purpose/newsworthiness
-Does the public need/want to know this information?
-Is this the full story? If not, is it enough of the story to serve my audience?
-Is this information appropriate to be released as a small blurp of information? Is there another platform that would convey information better for public good?

Some other interesting questions also arose including:
-Is there a hint of bias in this news that will reflect on you as a reporter?
-Would other reporters in my news organization approve of this tweet?
-Am I paying too much attention to the news distribution (on social media) and not the gathering?

One student also argued against journalistic use of Twitter altogether based on concerns including accuracy.

This is terrific, David. Obviously you have a thoughtful, smart bunch. I would really love to hear your students weigh in on the issues Jacob Caggiano raises in this conversation, in response to Ellyn Angelotti’s comments on transparency. Since they may have spent more of their life than previous generations of journalists establishing a personal brand online (even inadvertently), what do they see as the right mix of transparency going forward? Things to consider might include the value of impartiality (and how that is best attempted) and building trust with the community you serve with your reporting.

Let’s first get the lay of the land. What ethical issues come up related to social media and political reporting that you see people looking for guidelines on? So many reporters and newsrooms go by feel…maybe even reinvent the wheel on routine challenges.

One of the main challenges is the balance between objectivity and transparency. You can reveal so much about yourself, like for example you political affiliation. But before social media, that definitely something that wasn’t acceptable. The line between personal biases and your professional work is nor blurred.

What are good ways you’ve seen people handle the new demand for transparency? And – is it worth it? Is it key for sustainability, because it creates a relationship? Or does it make your reporting work more difficult?

I think given the context of social media it’s more accepted to err on the side of transparency, we all have our inherent biases and perspectives, so we should take the opportunity to be as honest as possible. At the same time it is also important to try to do our best to set these biases aside when we are reporting to keep our stories as objective and fair as possible. We always need to do our best to seek truth and report it, no matter what the platform may be.

What about answering your critics? Online discussions can really lash at reporters and news outlets. We heard at the workshop last week that the public blames the media, at least in part, for the divisiveness and general nastiness of elections. When should you respond in social channels to criticism or feedback? How much should you pay attention? And again – what’s the value you’re looking to get back when you do?

Everyone can publish with social media, which really evens the playing field when it comes to the ability to comment. It can be useful to respond to those who might misunderstand your perspective, but it also opens you up to criticism, so you have to be ready to handle that. You should pay attention to social media and what people say because you can hold them accountable, just as they do you. The value you are getting back is more information and exposure to more viewpoints, which ideally leads to deeper critical thinking about important, relevant issues.

I’m interested in when and how to answer your critics. Responses can set up dialog and lead to new stories and sources. But they can also invite vicious, irrelevant remarks. Is that kind of communication useful? What can we do to be transparent and accountable without adding to the ‘muck’?

And what might be overriding values that would guide when (how, in what medium) to respond?
For example – how important is it if you’re pursuing more reporting – this might advance the story? Or how important is it, given the uncertainty of the news business, as a way to stay in touch with your audience?

I’d also love your thoughts – Ellyn, Jan, and anyone reading this – about when the backstory, what’s happening in social channels in response to stories, becomes the story itself? When do you “pull the curtain back” on those – already public – dialogues?

This is an oldie but goodie: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/12/31/diagram-how-the-air-force-response-to-blogs/ It
is a flowchart used by the Air Force when determining when to respond to blogs. I think there are opportunities to respond to people who may be misguided or unhappy, and it’s important to talk with them in a timely way — which can help to repair and build a relationship. Many of the others, those who are simply trying to be vicious or irrelevant, you can choose to simply ignore, or at the very least challenge them back with a question that can encourage productive conversation.

Social media is a great way to do both of those practices that you mention: advancing the story and building a relationship with your audience. However you should always keep ethical practices top of mind no matter what step in the journalistic process you may be in.

Jan, I think it does matter who is commenting. It adds a missing context that can help you understand the commenter’s possible motivation, and helps you give your response more relevance when you consider the audience.

I don’t think Doug Oplinger mentioned this at #ksuethics12, but the ABJ did a piece on exactly who the commenters often are. Many of the frequent commenters live up to the stereotypes we have about them–single, middle aged guys, etc, which reinforces Ellyn’s point that who is commenting matters a lot.

And that brings to mind this question: Would journalists’ interest in responding to the community change if comments weren’t anonymous?

Our site has moved away from anonymous commenting by using a Facebook-based commenting system. There are still a few nasty comments and a couple people who go out of their way to create fake Facebook accounts, but overall I think the general discussion on the site has improved and a lot (but not all) flaming/trolling/etc has fallen by the wayside.

As for journalist interaction with commenters, it’s still at a minimum. We have a fairly engaged audience who, if they have an issue with our reporting, will email us directly. So the interaction happens on a more private level. It still seems that journalists interacting with commenters is more or less taboo.

We may be discussing two different environments (or more?): addressing people commenting on our respective sites and engaging our communities in the realm of social media. In either event, for my part, tone rather than actual id is more important to conversation. It may just be coincidence that tone can be a function of whether a person is identifiable.

Interesting, Peter… they are different environments, but aren’t comment pages set up to engage communities? Could they be changed so they DID actually advance political coverage? They aren’t social media, I guess…although many now integrate social media by requiring sign-ins that tie to a social profile.

Dan and Josh: interesting topic on commenting. We’re actually discussing this right now in our Digital Media Technologies graduate course at USFSP; the entire premise of comments and their value is something of a divisive topic. While some say that constructive commenting bridges the gap between author and reader, providing for stimulating discourse and sometimes even further examination of the subject, others will argue that commenting (especially anonymously) only opens the door for fruitless sermons (or worse, nasty off-topic attacks.)

Would it be a matter of adjusting the format of commenting so that reader’s responses become a part of the journalistic conversation, rather than eliminating them altogether? My classmates and I have come to some conclusions on that matter, ranging from required full name identity, moderation teams (including semi-self moderated communities), and selective comment filtration.

Very true Ellyn, I do think that erring on the side of transparency is the way to go for most journalists.

What I think is the challenge is expressing political or social alignment without it infiltrating objective reporting (is there such a thing – really? that’s a whole other subject…) I think whether consciously or not, we as journalists are also human, and will likely bring our leanings with us – if even subtly, unintended or not – into our stories. News outlets have a projected brand, and that may be the real question: does this particular journalist represent our brand appropriately, even as they express themselves as individuals?
It may be the shift that’s really happening is with our readers; they may be calling for an abandonment of total neutrality upon the advent of social media, where celebrities, public figures, legislators, and even us journos, become accessible. Become people. With opinions, perspectives and passions, but projected with respect and understanding of differing views.
So the question still remains: where is the line drawn between our role as in-the-middle reporter and our right to our own freedom of speech?

Let’s touch on a couple more issues before our live window wraps up. Ellyn, you mentioned risks of data visualization at the conference. Any early thoughts on guidelines to avoid oversimplification and story distortion?

I think when it comes to data visualizations, it is most important to look carefully at the data being presented and also the source of the information. Data visualizations can be great ways to tell a story that involves a lot of nitty, gritty data, and at the same time it can also lead to conclusions that would be different than you would come up with given the same facts.

I think that you can do your best to present as many perspectives as possible. Really though, the most important thing is to make sure you’re dealing with credible sources for the data and that the data is accurate.

And you’d mentioned plagiarism as an area that is ethically fraught, what with easy copying, and aggregation. Fareed Zaharkia just got suspended for this (and the comments reflect some of the anti-media feelings mentioned above). Your advice?

When it comes to sourcing the more clear you can be about where you information is coming from the better. I know that this is a point of contention in the digital journalism community: Some people think linking to a story is sufficient when using it as a source, but sometimes your audience doesn’t get to click on that link, so it is best to include whatever information you can find about the source and how you get the information, to put the quote or information into proper context.

What are your thoughts on media organizations using other people’s/business’s pics from Facebook without getting permission? I realize that there is a lot of gray area in terms of the internet, but I still feel that doing this violates basic copyright law in many cases?

In addition to be a good idea to contact folks before using their pictures found on social media from a legal perspective, it is also a good way to build a relationship with these people as well. Whenever you use images you find online, you should ensure that you have rights, or that the images is in the public domain or allows you to use the image with some sort of license like Creative Commons. If you’re linking to an image, be sure to credit the creator and link to the original source (NOT the Google image link).

I’m glad we appear to be on the same page. I’ve come across opinions from all over the board on this issue. I see a number of people that argue fair use, but explaining that not everything online falls under fair use has proven to be a tad difficult.

Just under half an hour until we start talking with Poynter’s Ellyn Angelotti! Some key “collisions” between political coverage and ethics she mentioned when we talked at the workshop Kent State last week include: pressures to share your views (connect) and act fast, easy cut and pasting that can result in wrong facts or plagiarism and how to contextualize groups or movements that happen largely online. And a whole lot of interesting issues around data visualization! More soon…

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Talking with Ellyn Angelotti

Ellyn Angelotti teaches on digital trends and social media at The Poynter Institute, focusing on the intersection of journalism, technology and law. She has won awards for creative, interactive content and regularly trains journalists in digital storytelling. She co-presented with Poynter’s Kelly McBride “What the Fact?” at the 2012 Poynter Kent State Media Ethics Workshop.

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